Vivid Racing is one of the top dealers for brake companies like Brembo, Rotora, StopTech, and more. We carry a wide range of brake pads from Ferodo, Pagid, Axxis, and Hawk. It is very important to Bed your brakes in properly whenever you put new brake pads on your car or install a big brake kit. Our braking partner Essex has written this How To article and produced this video we are sharing with you.
Properly bedding in your brake pads and rotors is absolutely critical if you want to squeeze the most performance from your brake system. Unfortunately, many enthusiasts don’t understand how or why they should be doing this important procedure. In this inaugural episode of “Know Brakes,” Jeff Ritter teaches you everything you need to know to prepare your brake pads and rotors for heavy use.
Highlights include in-car footage of the process, before and after component photos, and an interview with AP Racing engineer Steve Hood. Armed with the knowledge in this video, you’ll be able to get better feel, longer wear, and less noise out of your brake system. You’ll also save money and get more enjoyment out of your car.
The Process:
If you have brake ducts on your car, in conjunction with a big brake kit, you may want to block them off to allow the system to heat up more easily. I’m going to accelerate up to roughly 60mph and then decelerate down to a slow roll…maybe 5 or 10 mph. It’s not a crisis if ABS intervenes, but you should try to hold the brakes at a point just before ABS intervenes. That will ensure a smooth application of the pads against each rotor, rather than a series of brake ‘hits’ from each caliper. Once I get down to 5 or 10mph, I’m going to immediately accelerate back up to about 60, so the brakes don’t have much time to cool off.
With the cold pads and rotors, the pads won’t have a ton of bite, and they may feel a little wooden. After a couple of stops though, they’ll begin to ‘come in’ a bit.
Okay, we’re on stop #2 now, and I can already smell the resins and lubricants cooking a bit. We should start to see some smoke coming off the front corners on the next couple of stops.
This is stop #3, and I’m seeing a good deal of smoke. This is where most people get freaked out, which is why they don’t typically get a good bed-in completed. Your brakes aren’t going to spontaneously combust, so no need to panic, particularly if your pedal still feels solid.
There is a chance you’ll experience pad fade at this point. You’ll know that’s happening if your brake pedal is firm when you press it, but the car still isn’t slowing down. That means you need to be extremely cautious when performing your next couple of stops…you need to make sure you have plenty of room, because the car will require a greater distance to stop.
Okay, now I can feel the pads transferring to the rotor. The feeling is hard to describe…the pedal feels a little bit different under my foot…the pads feel like they’re compressing somewhat, and they also feel like they’re sticking to the rotor a tiny bit when I release the brake pedal.
We’re seeing more smoke now as we pour more heat into the system. Now is when we really need to be careful not to come to a complete stop. If the police show up right now, just wave and yell out the window that you can’t stop because you’re performing a scientific experiment. I’m kidding, but seriously try not to come to a complete stop at this point.
Now the pads are really starting to fade quite a bit on the final stops, the smoke is heavy, and they smell. Let’s go do a cool down and see what we have. For your cool down, you want to get air flowing across and through your rotors and pads. That means it’s better to go cruise down the highway for five minutes than it is to putt around town at 30mph. You also don’t want to be in a stop-and-go scenario where you have to come to a complete stop. For all of you country bumpkins, it should be easy.
For the city folk, it can be a little tougher. When I lived in LA I used do my bed-ins in an old industrial park, then I’d hop on the 405 freeway and just cruise for five or ten minutes. There’s just nothin’ quite like the smog-filled air ruffling your hair after a good bed-in run. When I went out to Buttonwillow or Streets, I’d sometimes do my race pad bed-in on the long, straight roads that lead out into the desert past the track. Just make sure you have your water bottle with you, and watch out for tumbleweeds and rodents.
Post bed-in inspection
We’re back in the shop now, and we need to take a look at our results. Here’s the front rotor we just bed-in, and here’s the shot of it as it came out of the box. While it doesn’t look quite as good as what we were able to accomplish on the burnishing machine, you can still see a clean transfer layer. It’s smooth, evenly distributed, and dark in color…not bad for the first try! That’s what we’re after, and it was obvious before I pulled the rotors that the bed-in was successful. The brakes felt great after the cool down…I had good bite, no noise, and the pedal felt solid.
These are the pads I just bed-in. You can see the edges are a grey ash color, and it’s obvious that they got cooked a bit. That’s how they will look, and no you haven’t hurt or ruined them.
Race pads and BBK’s
If your rotors and pads don’t look like this when you’re done, then you just have to go back out and do another cycle. A cycle is the full series of stops. Chances are, you probably didn’t get your setup hot enough, and it will take some practice to learn what it takes for the procedure to be effective on your specific car. This can become particularly challenging with race pads on a big brake setup.
The rotors typically flow more air than the stockers, they are a larger heat sink, and race pads need a lot of heat before they start transferring material to the rotors. If after each stop you are immediately accelerating back up to speed, that means you have to perform your stops from a higher speed…80mph or 100mph are nice starting points. Keep in mind though, that the energy in those stops is much higher, so you may not need to do as many of them. Instead of 10 stops from 60, you may only need to do 6 from 100.
Or, maybe it’s 20 stops from 60, instead of 10. Again, it’s just going to depend on your particular pad and rotor combo. Please keep your local posted speed limits in mind when working with race pads.
View Video Here – https://www.essexparts.com/learning-center/cat/brake-rotors/post/Bed-in
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